Magnetic sensors can be used in a wide field of applications. One exemplary application of magnetic sensors is as an angle sensor for controlling a motor. Magnetic sensors can be used for determining a quantity and/or a direction of a magnetic field.
Several magnetic sensor designs have been developed. One interesting design of a magnetic sensor is based on a semiconductor substrate comprising magnetically sensitive regions obtained by embedding magnetic sensing elements in the semiconductor substrate in the form of so called “Horizontal Hall elements”, and by arranging a magnetic substance on top of the semiconductor substrate for bending the magnetic flux from a horizontal direction (parallel to the surface of the semiconductor substrate) towards a vertical direction (perpendicular to said surface). Such magnetic substance, arranged in the vicinity of magnetic sensing elements for bending magnetic field lines, are known in the art as “Integrated Magnetic Concentrator”, abbreviated as IMC, and is described for example in EP1182461 and EP2814065.
A problem of magnetic material is that it has a hysteresis (related to magnetic coercivity) which causes inaccuracies of magnetic field strength measurements. There is a need to reduce the coercivity of the magnetic material.